Fear Factory needs no introduction. If you don’t know them, you must have been living under a rock or in Mongolia for at least the last ten years. Guitarist Dino Cacéres left in 2002 and the band seemed as dead as it gets. 2001’s Digimortal started the downfall. The album got lousy reviews, and indeed was their weakest work to date. Fans deserted, as did the great Dino. Now, former bassist Christian Olde Wolbers takes a swing at playing guitar and Strapping Yound Lad Byron Stroud has stepped in at bass. Can ‘Archetype’ reclaim lost Fear Factory territory?

The CD starts off with ‘Slave Labor’. This songs starts 96 percent the same as ‘Shock’, the starter of the Obsolete album –which was a great album-. If you compare the two, it is absolutely ridiculous. Besides that, it does evolve into a decent song, just one for a sort of Obsolete Reloaded kind of thing. The crappiest song is numero dos. ‘Cyberwaste’ starts with the lyric ‘Nothing you say matters to us’, followed up by ‘FUCK YOU!! Come on, seriously you can’t do that. Furthermore the song is incoherent; parts don’t fit together.
Luckily we released of our annoyance with numero tres. ‘Act of god’ is a lot better, with good lyrics, good riffing variety and nice, subtle touches of cybersounds from keyboard. Numero cuatro, same, although you kind of feel like ripping off your ears in madness when Burton sings ‘Falling away again’. The equivalent of bullshit. The song however, is instrumentally interesting, with some Meshuggah touches at the end. Nice.
Although not very original, the album keeps going pretty strong. Thing that stands out is that there are less keyboard touches. Only when they are truly needed. Songs 7, 8 and 9 keep a bit of a slower pace, but they still sound intense, while on Digimortal you nearly fell asleep with the slower songs.
With numero diez, ‘Bonescraper’, things heat up again. Fire up. FIRE UP. ‘Bonescraper’. Fantastic hook to begin with, perfect build up.

No time to relax on this one. The most brutal song on the album. This song is so unbelievably great, and fucking loud, it must be one of the loudest Fear Factory songs ever. I actually believe it is the best Fear Factory song ever. They really should’ve put this one somewhere in the beginning of the album, ‘cause in a record store you usually start with listening to songs 1, 2 and 3, before you feel uneasy and leave.
Towards the end, numero once, takes it easy, which is nice after being wrecked with ‘Bonescraper’. Number twelve is an interlude, which they should’ve shortened and used as the intro to this album. Wasted opportunity. The closer is a Nirvana cover. Indeed, a Nirvana cover. Problably because it’s ten years ago Kurt decided to speed up his dying process, with which we start after being born. It is the song ‘School’, one of my favourite Nirvana songs. They manage to keep it authentic, while the do make it into a real Fear Factory song. Good way to end ‘Archetype’.

So can ‘Archetype’ reclaim lost territory?
Well, Olde Wolbers does a pretty good job on guitar, Burton does well on most songs and the drums are intense and brutal. Yet the album can only reclaim lost territory when listened to in the following way.
Skip songs one and two. Start with song 12, follow it up by number 5 ‘Archetype’. Then, let ‘Bonescraper’ out, followed by ‘Act of God’. Time for some slowing down: number 7 and 6. Don’t let the album lose power, by going to ‘Drones’. End the album with number 8 –slower- , 9 –bit faster-, 11 –layed back- and 13 –smashing and short-. Listen to it in that order and you have a really great album and you’ll be hoping Fear Factory continues for a long, long time and stops putting more than 11 songs on an album. Because of the lack of originality however, and songs 1, and 2, this album can`t be worth more than 7.5 out of 10.